Free The Ivory Swing by Janette Turner Hospital Page B

lips. And she certainly doesn’t approve of being stared at.”
    â€œPre-Dravidian. And after her there was nothing for fifteen hundred years. Think of it. Not a single artefact for all that time! And then suddenly a carnal explosion at Mathura and Sanchi — all those bountiful breasts and buttocks that crowd the stupas and temples. It’s a different iconography entirely. This one’s so exquisitely non-voluptuous. She was probably a sacred prostitute,”
    â€œReally?” Juliet looked at the miniature, at the naked boyish figure, with fresh interest.
    â€œYes. We deduce it from the bracelets and their ritual arrangement. And the stylized pose.”
    The dancer’s matchstick left arm was sheathed from shoulder to wrist in bangles. An armour against what? Suddenly the awe of the gentle pedant beside her settled on Juliet like a mist of light. She was drawn into the magic.
    Who was the woman, the actual flesh-and-blood woman, who four thousand years ago had tossed her head back with that look of disdain? For what priests or lesser men did she dance clad in nothing but bracelets? And what was she thinking when she jutted out her pelvis like that, its cleft visible and taunting? Did she despise the watching male eyes? Did she dream of enticement or of smashing, with her jewel-mailed arm and her fist clenched like a boxing glove?
    Well? demanded the haughty eyes. Do you think you’re any smarter after four thousand years? Have you figured out a better solution?
    As Juliet formulated her answer she realized that the Quattrocento man was moving on. It was like an eclipse.
    â€œOh please don’t go,” she said impetuously, catching hold of his arm. “I feel as though you’ve peeled cataracts off my eyes.”
    He was decidedly embarrassed, exposed, stripped now of the protective instructional role. She saw that he was not as young as she had first thought, that he was a number of years older than she, and that a network of fine lines radiated out from the black and mesmerizing eyes.
    â€œI was going to the concert,” he said awkwardly.
    â€œOh.”
    â€œOf course, you could come.” He seemed appalled that he might have been impolite. “It’s free, you know. Every lunch hour, in the third-floor music room.”
    In the music room a group of students played on shawms and crumhorns and viols. Music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
    â€œIt’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Though I don’t know what to listen for. I know nothing about it.” Tempting him to offer instruction. And he did. Over coffee afterwards. Over dinner that night. Over lunch the next day, His name was David, he said. She thought: I knew it would be a saint’s name.
    She did not tell Jeremy about him. Why should she? Their rules did not require it. And how could she explain him? It was like finding a unicorn in a city park. He beckoned her into a world hung with intricate glowing tapestries and haunted by the melody of extinct instruments.
    One day he called her at her apartment and Jeremy answered the phone.
    â€œFor you,” Jeremy said neutrally.
    David spoke in a rush of confusion. “I’m sorry … I didn’t think … I had no idea … Please forgive me.” He hung up.
    She called him back. “What did you want to ask me?”
    â€œIt’s nothing. I had tickets for a concert … But it really doesn’t matter.”
    â€œWhere should I meet you?”
    â€œAre you sure?” He seemed both nervous and reproachful.
    And later, after the concert, he said stiffly: “It was presumptuous of me. I don’t wish to interfere in your private life.”
    â€œYou’re not interfering. I live with a guy on and off, that’s all. His name’s Jeremy. We don’t police each other.”
    â€œI see. Are you in love with him?”
    â€œHe’s an exciting person,” she said.